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For the first time in fifty years, Fidel Castro is not presiding over Cuba. On February 24, 2008, the National Assembly named his younger brother, Raúl Castro, then seventy-six, president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. Since July 2006 Raúl had held interim power. Now he was formally in charge, and for the most part substantively as well.As long as he is alive and mentally alert, however, Fidel—el Comandante—will remain a potent symbol and an influential voice. Cuba is slowly starting down an uncharted path, not toward democracy but nonetheless toward something different from where it would have been had ill health not felled the elder Castro. Lacking his brother’s charisma, Raúl must govern through institutions, especially the military and the Cuban Communist Party (Partido Comunista de Cuba, PCC). This is nothing new. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the younger Castro led efforts to institutionalize the political system and somewhat loosen central control of the economy. In the early 1990s, Raúl and the generals were likewise instrumental in the modest economic reforms enacted after Germans tore down the Berlin Wall. On both occasions el Comandante stopped the reforms at his whim. Well before Fidel announced his retirement, on February 19, 2008, Raúl had disbanded the informal networks of loyalists his brother had used to keep tabs on the party and government bureaucracies. Institutions never stopped Fidel from setting and implementing policy as he saw fit, especially on economic and international matters. Since assuming the presidency, Raúl has 119 eight Cuba in Transition: The Role of External Actors Marifeli Pérez-Stable emphasized the importance of la institucionalidad, the notion that decisionmaking flows through institutions. The first order of business is the economy. Although radical moves akin to China’s or Vietnam’s are not in the offing, even modest market openings constitute steps away from the Fidelista legacy. For Fidel, market socialism is just a notch or two less objectionable than outright capitalism. For decades the character of Cuban politics—undemocratic, opaque, repressive—has been a concern for U.S. policymakers. Until the cold war ended, however, the United States never conditioned the normalization of relations to a democratic transition on the island. Now it does. Thus, the question “What is the current state of governance and the rule of law in Cuba?”lies at the core of current U.S. policy toward Cuba. There are two ways of answering . The first, hewing to the Helms-Burton Act of 1996—the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act—and thus to current U.S. policy toward Cuba, stands fast on maintaining the embargo until Havana takes meaningful steps toward democracy. Without a democratic rule of law, there can be no progress toward an understanding with Havana. The second, which marked U.S. policy under the Ford and Carter administrations in the 1970s and, intermittently, Clinton’s in the 1990s, takes a realpolitik approach. Granting that a democratic Cuba should be the goal of U.S. policy, realism dictates that dialogue and engagement pave the way there. The Helms-Burton Act is the law of the land in the United States, yet the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations sometimes looked beyond the law’s seemingly inflexible margins.President Clinton,for example,emphasized people-to-people contacts,expanded academic exchanges,and authorized educational travel. In 2002 President Bush—perhaps in reaction to President Carter’s successful trip to Havana that May and the Varela Project’s petition to the National Assembly for a referendum to amend the constitution— mentioned the Popular Power elections in 2003 as an opportunity for Havana: “If Cuba’s government takes all the necessary steps to ensure that the 2003 elections are certifiably free and fair and if Cuba also begins to adopt meaningful market-based reforms, then—and only then—I will work with the United States Congress to ease the ban on trade and travel between our two countries .”1 The president, in effect, accepted the Cuban constitution—which Helms-Burton does not—as the starting point for Havana to manifest a willingness to change and for the United States to respond in kind. A realpolitik framework means a realistic dialogue: neither Cuba’s commitment to a democratic transition nor a unilateral lifting of the U.S. embargo needs to happen before Washington and Havana start stepping back from the 120 Marifeli Pérez-Stable...

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